Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

‘But I’m married,’ Gwatkin said again.

He spoke rather desperately.

‘I’m not insisting you should take Maureen out. I only asked if you had.’

‘And Maureen isn’t that sort of girl.’

‘How do you know?’

He spoke angrily this time. Then he laughed, seeing, I suppose, that was a silly thing to say.

‘You’ve only met Maureen for the first time, Nick. You don’t realize at all what she’s like. You think all that talk of hers means she’s a bad girl. She isn’t. I’ve often been alone with her in that bar. You’d be surprised. She’s like a child.’

‘Some children know a thing or two.’

Gwatkin did not even bother to consider that point of view.

‘I don’t know why I think her quite so wonderful,’ he admitted, ‘but I just do. It worries me that I think about her all the time. I’ve found myself forgetting things, matters of duty, I mean.’

‘Do you go down there every night?’

‘Whenever I can. I haven’t been able to get away lately owing to one thing and another. All this security check, for instance.’

‘Does she know this?’

‘Know what?’

‘Does Maureen know you’re mad about her?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

He spoke the words very humbly, quite unlike his usual tone. Then he assumed a rough, official voice again.

‘I thought it would be better if I told you about it all, Nick,’ he said. ‘I hoped the thing wouldn’t go on inside me all the time so much, if I let it out to someone. Unless it stops a bit, I’m frightened I’ll make a fool of myself in some way to do with commanding the Company. A girl like Maureen makes everything go out of your head.’

‘Of course.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yes.’

Gwatkin still did not seem entirely satisfied.

‘You really think I ought to take her out?’

‘That’s what a lot of people would do — probably a lot of people are doing already.’

‘Oh, no, I’m sure they’re not, if you mean from the School of Chemical Warfare. I’ve never seen any of them there. It was quite a chance I went in myself. I was looking for a short cut. Maureen was standing by the door, and I asked her the way. Her parents own the pub. She’s not just a barmaid.’

‘Anyway, there’s no harm in trying, barmaid or not.’

During the rest of the walk back to Castlemallock, Gwatkin did not refer again to the subject of Maureen. He talked of routine matters until we parted to our rooms.

‘The Mess will be packed out again tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘Another Anti-Gas course starts next week. I suppose all that business will begin again of wanting to take my men away from me for their bloody demonstrations. Well, there it is.’

‘Good night, Rowland.’

‘Good night, Nick.’

I made for the stables, where I shared a groom’s room with Kedward, rather like the sleeping quarters of Albert and Bracey at Stonehurst. As Duty Officer that night, Kedward would not be there and I should have the bedroom to myself, always rather a treat. I was aware now that it had been a mistake to drink so much stout. Tomorrow was Sunday, so there would be comparatively little to do. I thought how awful Bithel must feel on parade the mornings after his occasional bouts of drinking. Reflecting on people often portends their own appearance. So it was in the case of Bithel. He was among the students to arrive at the School the following week. We should, indeed, all have been prepared for Bithel to be sent on an Anti-Gas course. It was a way of getting rid of him, pending final banishment from the Battalion, which, as Gwatkin said, was bound to come sooner or later. I was sitting at one of the trestle tables of the Mess, addressing an envelope, when Bithel peered through the door. He was fingering his ragged moustache and smiling nervously. When he saw me, he made towards the table at once.

‘Nice to meet again,’ he said, speaking as usual as if he expected a rebuff. ‘Haven’t seen you since the Battalion moved.’

‘How have you been?’

‘Getting rockets, as usual,’ he said.

‘Maelgwyn-Jones?’

‘That fellow’s got a positive down on me,’ Bithel said, ‘but I don’t think it will be for long now.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m probably leaving the Battalion.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘There’s talk of my going up to Division.’

‘On the staff?’

‘Not exactly — a command.’

‘At Div HQ?’

‘Only a subsidiary command, of course. I shall be sorry to leave the Regiment in some ways, if it comes off, but not altogether sorry to see the back of Maelgwyn-Jones.’

‘What is it? Or is that a secret?’

Bithel lowered his voice in his accustomed manner when speaking of his own affairs, as if there were always a hint of something dubious about them.

‘The Mobile Laundry Unit,’ he said.

‘You’re going to command it?’

‘If I’m picked. There are at least two other names in for it from other units in the Division, I happen to know — one of them very eligible. As it happens, I have done publicity work for one of the laundries in my own neighbourhood, so I have quite a chance. In fact, that should stand very much in my favour. The CO seems very anxious for me to get the appointment. He’s been on the phone to Division about it himself more than once. Very good of him.’

‘What rank does the job carry?’

‘A subaltern’s command. Still, it’s promotion in a way. What you might call a step. The war news doesn’t look very good, does it, since the Belgian Government surrendered.’

‘What’s the latest? I missed the last news.’

‘Fighting on the coast. One of our Regular Battalions has been in action, I was told this morning. Got knocked about pretty badly. Do you remember a rather good-looking boy called Jones, D. Very fair.’

‘He was in my platoon — went out on the draft.’

‘He’s been killed. Daniels, my batman, told me that. Daniels gets all the news.’

‘Jones, D. was killed, was he. Anyone else from our unit?’

‘Progers, did you know him?’

‘The driver with a squint?’

‘That’s the fellow. Used to bring the stuff up to the Mess sometimes. Dark curly hair and a lisp. He’s gone too. Talking of messing, what’s it like here?’

‘We’ve had beef twice a day for just over a fortnight — thirty-seven times running, to be precise.’

‘What does it taste like?’

‘Goat covered with brown custard powder.’

We settled down to talk about army food. When I next saw CSM Cadwallader, I asked if he had heard about Jones, D. Corporal Gwylt was standing nearby.

‘Indeed, I had not, sir. So a bullet got him.’

‘Something did.’

‘Always an unlucky boy, Jones, D.,’ said CSM Cadwallader.

‘Remember how sick he was when we came over the water, Sergeant-Major?’ said Corporal Gwylt, ‘terrible sick.’

‘That I do.’

‘Never did I see a boy so sick,’ said Corporal Gwylt, ‘nor a man neither.’

This was the week leading up to the withdrawal through Dunkirk, so Jones, D. and Progers were not the only fatal casualties known to me personally at that period. Among these, Robert Tolland, serving in France with his Field Security Section, was also killed. The news came in a letter from Isobel. Nothing was revealed, then or later, of the circumstances of Robert’s death. So far as it went, he died as mysteriously as he had lived, like many other young men to whom war put an end, an unsolved problem. Had Robert, as Chips Lovell alleged, lived a secret life with ‘night-club hostesses old enough to be his mother?’ Would he have made a lot of money in his export house trading with the Far East? Might he have married Flavia Wisebite? As in musical chairs, the piano stops suddenly, someone is left without a seat, petrified for all time in their attitude of that particular moment. The balance-sheet is struck there and then, a matter of luck whether its calculations have much bearing, one way or the other, on the commerce conducted. Some die in an apparently suitable manner, others like Robert on the field of battle with a certain incongruity. Yet Fate had ordained this end for him. Or had Robert decided for himself? Had he set aside the chance of a commission to fulfil a destiny that required him to fall in France; or was Flavia’s luck so irredeemably bad that her association with him was sufficient — as Dr Trelawney might have said — to summon the Slayer of Osiris, her pattern of life, rather than Robert’s, dominating the issue of life and death? Robert could even have died to escape her. The potential biographies of those who die young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, the poetry of enigmatic passages in an unfinished or mutilated manuscript, unburdened with contrived or banal ending. These were disturbing days, lived out in suffocating summer heat. While they went by, Gwatkin, for some reason, became more cheerful. The war increasingly revealed persons stimulated by disaster. I thought Gwatkin might be one of this fairly numerous order. However, there turned out to be another cause for his good spirits. He revealed the reason one afternoon.